They say Vista was the worst OS that Microsoft has come out with. Well, it seems to me that Ubuntu 12.04 is the Windows Vista of Linux distros.

I can no longer run much of the software I used to be able to, because it runs s-l-o-w-l-y and even locks up the GUI (even with dual CPUs and 1GB RAM), and Gnome is not what it used to be (for one thing, I can't stand that tiny, buggy pager in the lower RH corner).

Only by installing FVWM-Crystal am I even able to use this piece of junk. Even that didn't solve the above software issue.

I run 2 netbooks, a desktop workstation and a server on Ubuntu 12.04. A couple of observations.Upgrades can sometime be slower than a fresh install. I think Unity sucks, but I haven't noticed much of a perfomance hit. 11.10 I thought was a little buggier. !2.04 seems a marked improvement.

What programs are you running? are you running a 32 bit version on a 64 bit machine? Some applications are no longer supported and run lousy on larter systems. I moved from Evolution to Thunderbird, and OpenOffice because of these issues. There is always a another Linux distro but I've stuck with Ubuntu because there is so much support for it on line. Good luck and 73s

... I think Unity sucks ... What programs are you running? are you running a 32 bit version on a 64 bit machine?

Unity is worthless! What in the heck were they thinking?!

What won't run anymore is Virtualbox. I have to run XP Pro inside it for the Windows software than won't run under WINE, but it locks the machine up most of the time. Sometimes, I can't even Crtl-Alt-F3 to get into a virtual terminal.

Also, Fldigi is all of a sudden a CPU hog. Never used to be before.

There are other issues, too many to mention. One thing that comes to mind is that I can no longer edit the menus. It use to work so beautifully, but this is the very definition of "broken".

Switching to Gnome Classic at the login screen fixed a lot of the issues. Remember, 10.04 will still be supported until April of next year, so there's not a big hurry to upgrade yet. And as we get closer to 12.10 I'm sure we'll see many of the problems addressed.

Agreed, except that I needed to upgrade to 12.04 in order to be able to access the Preferences in CQRlog (that's explained on the software's web site). Otherwise, I'd have sure stayed at 10.04.

The Gnome desktop used to be the lower overhead alternative to KDE for older machines with speed & resource limitations. KDE is, was, and remains the more desirable desktop (IMHO), but like Gnome 3 the newer KDE 4.xx version is bloated by features only a geek can appreciate. 2 gigs of RAM is now the minimum recommendation for KDE and 1 gig is a real good idea with Gnome 3. Gnome 3 also assumes you have a "modern" video card with 3-D capability.

Whoopee.

I can't run Gnome 3 on my primary machine because of an older Intel video chipset. I think it odd that a Dell Optiplex (which is about as common a computer as you can find) would be incompatible with the New & Improved Gnome, so I chalk it up to obsolescence on my part or rectal / cranial insertion syndrome by the Gnome 3 code benders. Fact is the market is moving away from traditional desktop machines like mine and in a year or two when netbooks & tablets rule the cloud the wisdom of Gnome 3 might be more obvious.

Anyway.......... LinuxMint's MATE and Cinnamon desktops are a branch of Gnome 2. MATE runs fairly well on my machine but Cinnamon won't. A third option, XFCE, also runs moderately well. There are bugs, quirks, and general oddness in the video driver and the auto-updater has been an issue for me, but two out of three will run. I need to upgrade this machine so I can get back to KDE. The old 3.59 version ran like a champ but it has been abandoned in favor or 4.xx. For those of you wondering why I didn't just stay with KDE 3.59... Java, Flash and the web browser all became obsolete and without them I can't use it.

Here are the distro's I like. Most offer a Live! version you can burn to a CD and run as a test but be aware a CD will run much slower than a normal install. All are free to download with no obligation.

PC-BSD is a modern branch of U Cal Berkely's ancient but bulletproof UNIX for AT&T. It has come a long way over the past few years and on a reasonably decent machine runs exceptionally well. It is not 100% compatible with Linux. Maybe 95%, but not 100%............

I've found it's best to just do a new install instead of upgrading when dealing with Ubuntu. So now I copy all of my data files to a NAS then just do a fresh install. Since I've started doing this I've had very few problems, all of which were rectified by some quick research.

I'd suggest trying this if you want to stick with Ubuntu.

I've been using Linux since the 90s and I think I'm the only old-school person who likes Unity. It's come a long way since the version that was in 11.

It may not be a cure-all, but have you tried installing the Xubuntu desktop? It should just install and you will have a menu selection on the GDM login screen to select XFCE.

Just did that. Time will tell, but it seems better already. I like XFCE. :-)

If FireFox didn't use so much RAM, I think I could run Virtualbox at the same time with just the 1GB I have now. It does too much swapping to disk, but at least it didn't completely freeze this time. I'll probably try Chrome for now.

I enjoy 12.04, with the Unity interface. As computing should be done, if you actually want to work on a machine. Virtualbox with windows 7 in it just runs fine, as does cqrlog and fldigi. I use Ubuntu since a couple of years now, upgraded from one version to the next one without doing fresh installs, and see no reason to change.

Nate's (N0NB) Xubuntu/XFCE suggestion seems to be the solution to all these issues (so far) that cropped up when I upgraded from Ubuntu 10.04 to 12.04. And XFCE has so many nice features!

Thanks to Nate and everyone else for all the suggestions (especially about the alternative Linux distros).

I need an additional gigabyte of DDR400 RAM, and then the remaining speed issue (swapping to the HD when running all the programs that I need to at the same time) will probably be solved. But that probably costs more $ than I have to spend right now.

I personally would never use the upgrade path to use a new version of any Linux distribution. I always do a clean install. It is very common for people to post reports of upgrade issues in the Ubuntu forums. I guess it works for some.

My normal install routine is to use the gparted live CD to zero out/wipe a few gigabytes of the hard drive.

Command in the "root terminal": dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1M

then ctrl c to stop the process, after a minute or two.

Then I use Ubuntu live CD to install. I press enter when I see the Ubuntu icon/ keyboard, and select "install". I also tab for a custom command namely video=LVDS-1:d for a resolution issue.

I keep my system lean, and fresh... Ubuntu is a very stable platform for me, and easy to update the packages. Which I do frequently.

I have also used a fresh install to correct problems after updates. I did that recently when a intel video driver update caused a daemon problem.

I also run Firefox without plugins, and use Google chrome for flash when needed, as there will be no new updates for flash in Linux, just 5 years of security updates only from Adobe. Works well for me. Google has licensed flash for there use in Linux, and it is now built into Chrome. Google "flash player about" or "linux flash" for more info.

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